Although Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris running mate and avowed friend of socialism, has made remarks indicating that he is a foe of totalitarianism and the Chinese Communist Party, he also seems to have had no problem cooperating with the CCP and helping the Party to propagandize. And his pro-China sentiment seems to ambiguously elide into pro-CCP sentiment.
Cozy ties
“Walz and his supporters would like us to believe that his cozy ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are not unusual,” says Seamus Bruner. “In fact, he is ‘hawkish’ and a staunch critic of the CCP’s human rights abuses, his media allies say. The Chinese have an expression for the practice of providing cover for the communist regime while issuing the occasional muted critiques: it’s called ‘big help with a little bad mouth.’ ”
At a 2015 congressional hearing, Walz said:
I think many of us recognize—and I am glad that the chairman mentioned it—the decoupling of most-favored-nation status to human rights [during the Clinton era] was something, and I, too, supported that. And I think the idea was, with a free-market economy, we would see a more opening of the Chinese grip on social life and on human rights. That simply has not occurred.
And so I think there needs to be the focus on what the Commission says [in a 2015 annual report on Human Rights in China]. I would say I think the report is correct; it is getting worse, not better….
There is no denying China’s economic growth and China’s ability to raise standards of living. They should rightfully be proud of that. China has moved many people out of poverty and moved them into a more stable and more prosperous existence. But we cannot decouple economic growth from human rights growth, and, as a nation, we need to hold those ideas up.
Which sounds almost fine. If only something like this perspective, however belatedly reached, were shared by all. But the question is whether the expressed realism about China and the expressed concern for rights are contradicted by other sayings and doings of Walz.
Even his statements at this 2015 committee hearing raise questions. Why did Walz then stress how “complex” and “difficult” he found the country to be even after his many trips there and knowledge of the Chinese language? Was he merely stating a truism about any country whose culture and society resists distillation into into a few bullet points? Or was he hinting at factors that should (in his view) temper our indictment of CCP rule?
Why did Walz say during that hearing that the extent of economic growth possible under the modern fascist version of communism was something “they should rightfully be proud of” if that growth was never achieved apart from the CCP’s policies of pervasive repression and murders?
Anybody in any system can be proud of making successful efforts to survive and prosper to the extent possible, and perhaps this is all Walz meant. But he refers to “China’s ability [the CCP’s ability?] to raise standards of living.” The ambiguity is not resolved in his favor by other things we know about Walz’s relationship to China and the Chinese Communist Party.
Seven
A Breitbart piece by Bruner considers “Seven Troubling Tim Walz Connections to Communist China” that Walz should but probably won’t explain. Not on the numbered list is the weird fact that Walz married his wife on June 4, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, because he “wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” as his wife told a reporter back then.
But this weird item is related to number one on the list, since the Walz couple’s honeymoon in China apparently represented the beginning of many Walz-arranged, CCP-arranged field trips to China. Sixty students tagged along.
A few of the seven (“Seven Troubling Tim Walz Connections to Communist China,” August 8, 2024):
1. The CCP approved and even subsidized Walz’s student exchanges.
After his first trip to China in 1989, Walz returned to his teaching job in America and hung a “Chinese banner” in his school office. By 1993, Walz was taking American students on visits to China where he told his students to “downplay their American-ness.”…
Shockingly, Chinese authorities reportedly covered “a large part of the cost” of the 1993 summer trip. The next year, Walz and the Chinese government jointly sponsored scholarships for American students to visit China. Between 1989 and 2003, Walz travelled with hundreds of students to China.
2. A CCP diplomat and other CCP government officials attended Walz’s gubernatorial inauguration in January 2019.
A translation from a Chinese government source reveals that, “Acting Consul General Liu Jun congratulated Governor Walz and expressed his expectation to strengthen cooperation with the new Minnesota government to jointly promote the friendly and cooperative relations between Minnesota and China.”
Why were CCP members at the inauguration of a Minnesota governor and would Chinese diplomats congratulate a sincere critic of China’s human rights abuses?…
6. Less than one year into his first gubernatorial term, Walz was an honored guest speaker at multiple CCP-backed influence operation events in 2019.
Ten months after his inauguration, Walz accepted a speaking gig from a CCP-backed event, joining the president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) on the short list of speakers….
The CPAFFC is effectively a CCP “United Front” cutout that is accused of “directly and malignly influencing” state and local politicians in the U.S., according to the State Department.
7. Walz has a long history of making outlandishly pro-CCP comments….
In 2011, Walz said he developed “a great admiration for and a close connection with the Chinese people” after teaching there. He indirectly praised the CCP’s brutal police when he said that China had “almost no crime.”
Walz has also claimed the U.S. does not need to have an “adversarial relationship” with China and that “there was no anti-American feeling [in China] whatsoever.”…
On the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre, Walz said that “every nation has its dark periods that it must come to grips with.” And that “this Nation [the US] is no exception.”…
Why does Tim Walz seem to downplay the undeniable bloodshed of communism and socialism?
Bruner concludes that “this is a developing story.” It is. Let’s see whether Walz makes it into the White House.
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “China’s United Front in the United States: Not Even Nuisances?”
